both of us!
beginning the 13th of april i (carrie) went back to work for Cascade Engineering, where i used to work pre-egypt. let me tell you how strange it is to be gone for over 6 years and then come back and find your own initials on documents in the same files you worked on (and thought were old school) back then. i’m filling in for the maternity leave of my replacement’s replacement, and she does quite a different lot of work and more so on the accounting end of things.
Cascade is a good company. i knew that back then. but now they’re making windmills and kids lunch boxes and “recycle” dumpsters. and they operate on a triple bottom line approach – not just financial but also social and environmental. they even have a company Prius for use when engineers need to go to a customer.
on the 17th of may, five weeks into his six week layoff and my 12-week assignment, dan got a call back to work! we were not expecting that – rather we were expecting that the call would be to extend his layoff. it was working out pretty well to have henry stay with dadda while mama went to work, but HD was beginning to show favorites. at one point, henry even sat back down in bed when mama came in to get him up one saturday morning, and he said “dadda?!” so it’s for the best (and not just financially) that dadda is back to work.
henry’s doing Really well at day care with his buddy Caiden. it even seems like he’s hurrying to get me out of there in the morning with his cute little “bubye” while Caiden’s mama and i are chatting. they have so much fun together and henry is fully converted to one-nap-a-day because of all the fun stuff to do and the variety of stimulation at someone else’s house. i think he was just gettin bored at home with the same-ol’ same-ol’ and prefer to take a snooze.
and i found out yesterday that the woman i’m filling in for has decided to extend her mat leave into august, instead of just the beginning of july. so that means we will quite likely have more income in our future. we’re a bit torn between putting it all towards a trip to egypt or towards a new car. our dear dear jetta had a much deserved spa-day at the Rolland-Spa the last time he was in town. he gave us a printout of all the work that was done to it and the total was, well, a lot. after volunteering his labor and getting us a better-than-retail-price on parts, we didn’t pay nearly that much. but sadly, barely one tank of gas later the transmission had a meltdown. the gear box just isn’t something you look at on a vw when you’re giving it a once over for the things that generally cause it to run hard and clunky. transmissions just don’t die on a vw. usually, that is. so, while the car sits in the street waiting for the “new” tranny to arrive from a land far far away, dan’s been riding chad’s Victory to and from work, thankful for the short commute and the truck to ride in on rainy days. now that my Honda is up and running we just need to get a sidecar and a helmet for the boy and we’d be all set. i wonder if they make sidecars that accept kids carseats…… hmmm… our hope is to keep our dear little jetta running long enough to pay cash for our next jetta, a TDI wagon. vroom vroom, fahrvergnügen.
work is sure not slammed for dan’s company, but they’re keeping all the crews busy to 40 hours somehow. i think i know Who is behind it…
